Fewer Than 10 ET Civilizations In Our Galaxy?

Originally posted by Redfield
reply to post by guppy

 

Did you know time speeds up the further away you are from gravity, which means that what people think are billions of years old are infact only thousands.

Are you attempting to provide a scientific theory that fortifies a religious belief?

IRM

reply to post by Redfield


Yes, any one who has studied physics knows about time and gravity. But I do not understand what your statement is asking or relative to what we're talking about. Please clarify.

Despite our supposed "advanced" civilization, I would consider humans as ignorant about the universe as an ant is ignorant about a highway. We claim we know so much. How can this be when we're stuck on our planet?

Its like Bob being stuck in his house with no communication with the outside world (e.g., TV, cable, phone, etc.). All of Bob's knowledge comes from his home's window. Wanting to see more, Bob constructs a telescope and is able to see beyond his normal vision. Later on, Bob creates RC cars with cameras and starts exploring the outside world remotely. Those RC cars occassionally bring back specimens from the outside.

Does this make Bob an expert with the outside world? Not even close. Bob can never know the wonders of his planet until he leaves the confines of his home.

That said, who is to say Einstein is right? Already our leading physicists are researching into parallel worlds. Within a decade or two, we might not refer our universe as just "A Universe" but a multiverse.

reply to post by Welfhard

If we go looking for it, we may not even recognise it. I image that in great irony, we would stumble across a species on their way to world domination but since we do not find cities and artificial satellites, we would move on.

I completely agree with you there. With our own egos pushing out into the deeps of space, we may come across an intelligent species without ever knowing. We need to teach our kids to think outside the box and not be afraid of being creative and looking at things that don't fit into a template.

As for intelligence being rare, I agree. But despite how rare life can be our galaxy alone is BIG! Even though, estimating mathematically is purely a guess. Lets do some numbers:

Probability of Life is 0.01% = 0.0001
Probability of Intelligent Life is 0.001% = 0.00001
Our Milky Way Galaxy has an estimated average of 300 billion stars = 300,000,000,000

Based on these "very loose" figures, we have the following:

Life (plain) = 30,000,000
Intelligent Life = 3,000,000

Of course, these numbers are based on egotistical assumptions, like ET life will be similar to earth. So take it with a grain of salt.

Originally posted by InfaRedMan

Originally posted by Welfhard


It took 4 billion years for us to appear after the earth formed. We have rapidly rose to a civilization in less than 10 thousand years.

Intelligence seems very difficult for evolution to develop and it seems a very very precise series of circumstances is required to pressure and organism into sentience.

You're basing your assessment on the history of Earth and it's creatures. One planet from one solar system out of billions. Have you stopped to wonder that perhaps the conditions we arose in aren't as conducive to intelligence/sentience than other parts of the universe?

We live in our own bubble and our intelligence appears to be marred by that. I highly doubt that we took the only road available in this universe to sentience.

IRM

We can see that high intelligence is not a needed evolutionary trait since we are basically one of billions of life forms that mother earth has created. So why have it at all? Right now it is a negative trait for we can destroy ourselves in a weekend and no other creature has ever been able to do that on this planet. Also our intelligence has created a fragile existence for us that even a lost hiker in the woods is dead in a week hehe, so a small hiccup on earth and we are very nearly wiped out whether it is natural or us doing it.

So take away our electricity and clean water for a while and most of us will parish where the rest of the creatures on the planet will flourish.

C2C had Seth Shostak from SETI last nite. Seth Shostak was asked if there were any changes in the Drake's equation. He said, nope not really current estimates are around 10,000 civilizations in our galaxy.

He said the new aray thats going on line now and looking for stuff is gonna be looking toward the center of our galaxy and using a common signal multiplied by pie (3.14 or what ever) and anyway ...

articles on SETI and info on C2C web site www.coasttocoastam.com...

[edit on 4-8-2009 by RUFFREADY]

reply to post by Xtrozero


Great point there. Intelligence is not a requirement. In our view, an insect colony is not classified as intelligent based on our standards. For that matter, does our classification of a civilization fit 100% of those in our galaxy? We may stumble on a society and only think of them as savages/animals/slave.

We need to kick our society in the [censored] and stop focusing on Michael Jackson's death, Brad Pitts mistress, what car is better than my neighbors, or what ringtone defines me as a person. Complete rubbish. The arts and real science have such a low priority.

reply to post by guppy


Building Block of Life on Comet

An amino acid has been found on a comet for the first time, a new analysis of samples from NASA's Stardust mission reveals. The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space.

Amino acids are crucial to life because they form the basis of proteins, the molecules that run cells. The acids form when organic, carbon-containing compounds and water are zapped with a source of energy, such as photons – a process that can take place on Earth or in space.

This confirms life outside our own planet. If NASA officially confirms fossilized bacteria on Mars and existence of life on Saturn's moon, then it just shows how common life is. Most calculations of extraterrestrial life is based on the probability of 1 planet sustaining life per 1 solar system. Right now, we might have to accept there are more than 1 celestrial body in our solar system that can sustain life -- or did.

In another 50 years as we "really" explore our solar system, we may find life on Venus and Jupiter. Scientists are discovering new life in areas of our planet we thought could never sustain life. Life finds a way.

reply to post by warrenb


yea there may only be 10, but they populate more area than just 10 planets....meaning there are more than we think...

It's ignorant to think they each only occupy one planet as we do.....we are young.....our galaxy and also universe are not....


Just use common sense and think about it for a sec.......actually think.....


Does what "they" tell us even make any sense , once you look at that new hubble pic where you can zoom in across the universe and see Billions and trillions of galaxies......each holding billions of stars ........

After all the recent posts about amino acids found in comets, i bet theres tons of life out theres. Theres probally civilizations smarter then ours in different galaxys

reply to post by Maddogkull


If they are intelligent beings out there as we understand intelligence then many, if not most will be astronomically greater than us. The reason is that the chances that they and we became intelligent at the same time are infinitesimally small.

I find that hard to believe. Only 10? In a galaxy as large as ours (only mid-size compared to others) we have about a 250 billion stars (took average from sites that say 100 billion to 1 trillion). some of these stars have no planets but some have many more then we do, so for this case lets say that there are an average of 8 planets to every star. So that means that there are 2 trillion planets in our galexy alone. We must remember not to let our preconseptions of life cloud our judgement of life. (ie just because we need oxygen to breath an alien species could need methine or heliem and O2 could be deadly) If we double the odds from our solar system that should mean that about eveery 1 in 16 planets has some form of life. If my math is correct (please correct me if it's not) that means there should be some form of life on about 125 billion planets. Now we factor in complex organisims (this is just a guess) lets say 1 in 100 has complex life. that number drops to 1,250,000,000. Now it time for "intelligent" life lets say those odds are 1 in 1000. thats 1,250,000 planets that support "intelligent" life (when I say intelligent life I mean like us, from early man on) Of those planets how many have the ability to travel in space. i think that would be 20%. So we are looking at 250k that can travel in space like we do or better. Of that 250k I would have to say that 5% have mastered intersteller travel so that leaves 12500 that have the means to even get to us. Of that 12500 how many would want to make contaact with a race that cant even get along with each other because of little things like skin color 0 But as you see by my calculations there are atleast 1.2 million planets that support "intelligent" life and over 100 billion that support some form of life. Granted my stats are all guesses but I think they are all pretty reasonable.